Why does the pi float?

On Tuesday, I thanked my lucky stars that no more screaming stars had appeared for a whole week.

But on Wednesday, they did, so I cursed the very ground I stood on as I tried to gnaw my own ears off.

The next several days were a haze of confusion, interrupted occasionally by a chicken trying to peck my eyes out.

On Saturday, while munching on a cardboard box in my back yard and watching another one of Ambrose Burnside’s many televised speeches, a pi floated by. I was nonplussed, having seen floating pis afewtimesbefore. As Mr. Burnside went on and on about his facial hair singlehandledly defeating Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Mazar-e-Sharif in 2001, the pi hung in the air before me, flapping its wings and staring at me with its beady little eyes, until I finally did panic (for no reason, really). I hid behind the log upon which I had been sitting until the pi turned and lazily floated off as abruptly as it had first arrived.

After checking that no killer keyboards lurked in the underbrush, I clambered back up on the log and sat down again to finish my corrugated lunch. It had become covered in snails while I had cowered, but that didn’t stop me from devouring it with gusto and glee. Six-legged pumas notwithstanding, Mr. Burnside’s latest speech turned out to be a smashing success.

As I went about smashing my TV after old Ambrose had finished his droning, the floating pi returned, close on the heels of a small family of eigenfactors. I freaked—I mean, man, I totally freaked. Eigenfactors! Eigenfactors from Eigentoria, no doubt! But as I doffed my fez in greeting, I realized something was wrong. Something was very, very, wrong…

“Déjà vu! Déjà vu! Déjà vu! Vú, vú-vù, vúù!!” I squealed, spinning in circles at the sudden realization and tossing diacritics about like confetti. First screaming stars, now a floating pi!? I looked around frantically, knowing what would come next: Lawn gnomes. Hideous gnomes. Hideous ceramic gnomes transforming into flesh and blood, donning golden parachutes, and coming to pelt me with tree nuts and moldy peaches.

I decided there was only one course of action before the gnomes began to accrete and try to bamboozle me with their effusion and flutery. Déjà vu, déjà vu… what to do when you’re surrounded by gnomes and there’s no way out? I had only one choice. One… final… choice. I closed my eyes, pressed the button… and went vroom!

My journal wandering aimlessly for a few more paragraphs, I found myself suddenly propelled up into the air at velocities heretofore unknown to a man with nothing more than a television remote control in his hand and a slab of frozen bacon perched on his head. Was it a farting spree gone wrong? Was it corn gone wrong? I surely didn’t know, and neither did Balki nor his lipless cousin. I screamed. I shrieked. I squealed, but I decided against squealing like a little girl still in her pigtails this time—it’s a bad habit I’m trying to break. I pawed at the air, trying to slow my ascent, but to no avail.